Gratitude is often understood as etiquette rather than ethics, an emotion rather than politics. It was not always so. From Seneca to Shakespeare, gratitude was a public virtue. The circle of benefaction and return of service worked to make society strong. But at the beginning of the modern era, European thinkers began to imagine a political economy freed from the burdens of gratitude. Though this rethinking was part of a larger process of secularization, it was also a distorted byproduct of an impulse ultimately rooted in the teachings of Jesus and the apostle Paul. Christians believed that God stood at the center of the circle of gratitude. God was the object of thanksgiving and God gave graciously. Thus, Christians taught that grace cancelled the oppressive debts of a purely political gratitude. Gratitude: An Intellectual History examines changing conceptions of gratitude from Homer to the present. In so doing, Peter J. Leithart highlights the profound cultural impact of early Christian “ingratitude,” the release of humankind from the bonds of social and political reciprocity by a benevolent God who gave—and who continues to give—graciously.

Of Circles, Lines, and Soup Tureens

I— Circles

1 Circles of Honor

2 Benefits and Good Offices

3 Ingrates and the Infinite Circle

4 Patron Saints and the Poor

II—Disruptions

5 Monster Ingratitude

6 The Circle and the Line

7 Methodological Ingratitude

III—Reciprocity Rediscovered, Reciprocity Suspected

8 Primitive Circles

9 Denken ist Danken

10 Gifts Without Gratitude

A Theistic Modernity

Notes

Bibliography

Indices

"Creative, Insightful, and Ambitious"

—Gary A. Anderson, University of Notre Dame, First Things

"Peter Leithart’s book addresses what he has perceived to be a significant gap in the literature, namely tracing how thinking in the West about gratitude has shifted since first attracting the interest of the Greek and Roman philosophers. His work demonstrates how the emergence of Christianity in particular caused a very sizeable rethink on the subject, a radical redefinition which has been widely influential, and yet not often in all its ramifications."

— Peter Donald, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology

“One of the distinct pleasures of a new Leithart book is the opportunity it gives us to watch a smart, unpredictable mind sharing his reactions to the books he's worked through. This new work deepens that pleasure.”

“Leithart’s masterful, commanding narrative takes several surprising turns, teasing out the revolutionary disruption of Christian ingratitude in social and political life—a refusal to bargain and grovel precisely because we are fundamentally grateful to the Creator and risen King.”

"...Leithart is exemplary in his performance of what a kind of Christian-theological account of history of ideas might look like."

—Johnny Walker, Freedom in Orthodoxy

“This is no ‘gratitude lite’ approach with its blending of philosophical, theological, political, and social sciences perspectives. Leithart persuasively makes a case for why gratitude is intrinsically interesting.”

—Robert Emmons, co-editor of The Psychology of Gratitude, and author of Thanks! and Gratitude Works!

“From Homer to the present, poets, theologians, and thinkers have struggled to find a proper place for this all-important, yet potentially toxic virtue. In a masterpiece of exposition, Peter Leithart tells the story of their efforts. To read this book is to listen in on the debate of an entire civilization, across the ages, over the nature of its own cohesion.”

Peter J. Leithart is Adjunct Senior Fellow in Theology at New Saint Andrews College and President of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, and Cultural Studies. He is the author of more than twenty books, including, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Baylor University Press, 2009).